So you see the question is no small one; to sing the praise of
this Linnaean muse is a task well worthy of the Pierian muses.
Do you know the outer look and aspect of the banana plant? If not, then
you have never voyaged to those delusive tropics. Tropical vegetation,
as ordinarily understood by poets and painters, consists entirely of the
coco-nut palm and the banana bush. Do you wish to paint a beautiful
picture of a rich ambrosial tropical island, _a la_ Tennyson--a summer
isle of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea?--then you introduce a
group of coco-nuts, whispering in odorous heights of even, in the very
foreground of your pretty sketch, just to let your public understand at
a glance that these are the delicious poetical tropics. Do you desire to
create an ideal paradise, _a la_ Bernardin de St. Pierre, where idyllic
Virginies die of pure modesty rather than appear before the eyes of
their beloved but unwedded Pauls in a lace-bedraped _peignoir_?--then
you strike the keynote by sticking in the middle distance a hut or
cottage, overshadowed by the broad and graceful foliage of the
picturesque banana. ('Hut' is a poor and chilly word for these glowing
descriptions, far inferior to the pretty and high-sounding original
_chaumiere_.) That is how we do the tropics when we want to work upon
the emotions of the reader. But it is all a delicate theatrical
illusion; a trick of art meant to deceive and impose upon the unwary who
have never been there, and would like to think it all genuine.
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